Roger Dubuis Rises Up From the Ashes

By Nazanin Lankarani

Feb. 25, 2013

PARIS — For the Swiss watchmaker Roger Dubuis, the buzz surrounding its new Quatuor model at the Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie, the Geneva watch salon, was a high point on a five-year climb back from near extinction.

Founded in 1995 as a partnership between the master watchmaker Roger Dubuis and Carlos Dias, a designer and marketer, the brand quickly built a name for avant-garde design.

Its aspirations were high: “From the outset, it was very important that our products have a distinctive aesthetic identity and also qualify for the Poinçon de Genève,” Mr. Dubuis said by telephone from Geneva.

The poinçon, or Geneva seal, is a hallmark awarded to wristwatch movements produced in the Canton of Geneva that meet rigorous quality and finishing standards.

But despite its aspirations, the company lost its way. Problems of reliability, after-sales servicing and distribution tarnished its reputation. Mr. Dubuis left in 2003, though he returned in 2011 as a consultant to the brand. In 2008, as the global financial crisis washed over the industry, Mr. Dias sold a majority stake to the Richemont luxury group, which proceeded to carry out a complete revamp of the brand’s product lines.

The results were on display in Geneva last month.

“The Quatuor is the major innovation of this salon,” Jean-Marc Pontroué, the brand’s chief executive since 2011, said by telephone from Geneva. “This watch marks a milestone for us because, more than a new complication, it is the result of major investment in the brand and years of research and development.”

Mr. Pontroué, who joined Roger Dubuis after 11 years in charge of product development at Montblanc, another Richemont subsidiary, has overseen the introduction this year of several novelties in the brand’s iconic Excalibur collection.

First presented last year, the Excalibur 42 Chronograph, with a 42 millimeter, or 1.65 inch, dial, was shown this year with a new automatic chronograph movement and a microrotor. The ladies’ model, the Excalibur 36, had a transparent sapphire case back that revealed the undulating lines of the “Côtes de Genève” motif decorating the Roger Dubuis mechanical in-house caliber.

But the Quatuor was the house’s top draw. Offered in a choice of 18-karat rose gold or light-weight silicon, with an imposing diameter of 48 millimeters, the watch featured an original power-reserve display and not just one, but a quartet of balance springs and wheels set symmetrically around the circumference of the movement.

“Today, when only a handful of companies are able to manufacture a movement in-house, producing a sprung balance internally is an exceptional achievement,” Mr. Pontroué said. “This new complication is groundbreaking in the use of new materials, two new patents for the power reserve indicator and its four sprung balances.”

Like a classical tourbillon complication, the use of multiple balance mechanisms, arranged in mutually compensating pairs around the movement, is intended to counter the distorting effect of gravity on the watch.

But according to the brand, while the rotating tourbillon cage takes time to achieve its compensating effect, the multiple balances do the job instantly.

Also, because the balances oscillate out of phase, the Quatuor’s RD101 caliber runs at a frequency four times higher than most watches, enabling it to achieve exceptional precision, the company says.

An audible result is that the ticking of a classic watch is transformed into a nearly continuous, organic hum — like the tuning note of a string quartet or “the sound of crickets in the south of France,” Mr. Pontroué said.

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A watchmaker at Roger Dubuis. The brand has now condensed its output into just four collections — Excalibur, Monegasque, Pulsion and Velvet.CreditMario Palmieri/Roger Dubuis

“It is a theatrical piece, both innovative and functional,” he added.

The rose gold version, made in a series of 88, is priced at 385,000 Swiss francs, or $420,000, while the silicon version, of which only three have been made, is priced at 1 million francs.

Silicon combines exceptional hardness with exceptional lightness — at an equal size a silicon case is half the weight of a titanium one and a quarter the weight of steel — but it can also be exceptionally brittle.

According to Mr. Pontroué, would-be buyers of the silicon version will be flown first-class to Switzerland for a viewing at the brand’s headquarters in the commune of Meyrin, near Geneva.

In an interview given to Watches TV, Gregory Pons, editor of the Web-based newsletter Business Montres & Joaillerie, selected the Quatuor as one of his top-five picks at the Geneva salon this year.

“It is a very manly watch and also very well thought out,” Mr. Pons said in the interview. “The four sprung balances this year are a stratospheric development.”

Some experts, however, remained doubtful of the brand’s claims of high precision.

“Roger Dubuis is pushing the envelope and exploring new challenges, but there is no way to check its claims of precision given that the Quatuor has no seconds hand to measure daily deviations,” Felipe de Palma, co-founder of The Watch Enthusiast, an online reference guide, noted from Madrid.

“There is no reliable bulletin d’observatoire to confirm, via reliable testing, the brand’s claims,” he added.

Such skepticism may reflect lingering memories of the brand’s earlier troubles — difficulties that Mr. Dubuis recognizes, likening them to growth pains.

“In our infancy, we faced a significant learning curve,” he said.

For Mr. Pontroué, the problems were rooted in over-ambition and a misreading of market trends in the mid-2000s.

“The difficulties were caused by the brand’s extravagant designs at a time when the market was experiencing a return to classicism,” he said.

When Richemont took over it could call on the technical and management resources of a stable of other watch brands that it already owned, including Jaeger-LeCoultre, Piaget, IWC, Baume & Mercier, Vacheron Constantin, Officine Panerai and A.Lange & Söhne.

“Richemont has made massive investments to re-engineer our movements,” said Mr. Pontroué. “That is what goes on backstage.”

Today, employing 250 in its facilities, including 160 watchmakers, the brand produces 31 calibers and is the only manufacturer that can boast certification of its entire annual production — more than 4,000 timepieces — with the Geneva seal.

“Before the Richemont acquisition, we had 400 references,” said Mr. Pontroué, referring to the number of different models in the brand’s various collections. “We needed to streamline the collections and have a clear growth strategy.”

After fierce pruning, the brand has now condensed its output into just four collections — Excalibur, Monegasque, Pulsion and Velvet — at prices ranging from €13,000 to €810,000, or about $17,500 to $1,090,000.

“Roger Dubuis has a new face, and sales are increasing,” Mr. Pontroué said. “We are in the beginning of a phase of accelerated growth.”